


The Way We Speak to Ourselves

by trufflemores



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Angst, Anxiety, Depression, F/M, Friendship, Gen, Grief, Hurt/Comfort, Recovery, Romance, Trauma, Whump, freed-from-prison Barry still has prison problems, hints of Dark!Barry
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-19
Updated: 2018-02-20
Packaged: 2019-03-21 12:02:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,956
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13740462
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/trufflemores/pseuds/trufflemores
Summary: Barry is a free man, but after a meta knocks him down, he's not sure he's his own person anymore.  He finds comfort with his friends and family, and they all lean on each other.





	1. Branded

_You wanna break somebody, don't you?_

Standing in the blue-lit basement, Barry throws a punch at the bag. It doesn't flinch, doesn't stand down like he wants it to. In a calmer state of mind, he retrofitted the punching bag to hold up to high-impact, heavy-impact blows, but now, its indifference infuriates him. He lays into it, cursing the naïve version of himself that thought it would be a good idea to make it unbreakable.

_You want it to shatter. You want it to hurt._

With a thunderous crack, his fist sinks into the bag hard enough to make the whole thing shiver.  _Finally_. He winds his arm back, aiming for a clean blow and gets another teeth-ringing  _boom_  for his efforts. Emboldened, he throws himself back into the game, his movements slowing down as his body speeds up and the rest of the world comes to a standstill.

Outsiders call him a  _speedster_ , but in his own field of view, everything slows down. With backbreaking effort, he protects and serves the city, and they marvel at how little breath it costs him, but they don't see what happens in those Speed-hours, straining in anaerobic silence to get the job done before it kills him. They don't see the way he tortures himself reconstructing buildings brick-by-brick, refusing to take a real-time breath until it's  _done_.

_You give them every second, every waking moment, every iota of life you have, and the world is still fucking broken._

He rages in silence, breathing heavily but refusing to slow down. He doesn't know why he feels this stupid compulsion, day-in-and-day-out, to throw himself into the flames in the  _hope_ of saving somebody. Sanity regards him dismally, reminding him that everybody dies someday and he can't play God.

 _You're no God. You bleed too much_.

Before disappearing into the darkness, he caught a glimpse of his face in the sunset-orange window, a deep black gash cutting across his left eye. Cable's invisible whip hit him hard, making contact the instant he slowed down. She'd known he was coming; she'd tapped into their wires. She'd  _felt_  his lightning approach and responded accordingly. He was an easy target, a lab rat rushing headlong into danger, and he was fast but even he couldn't outrun a direct, perfectly timed hit.

Staggered, he clung with dying animal ferocity to coherence, desperately trying to ignore the sudden sharp barbed-wire pain splitting him open from hip to brow. Fortuitously, the wound didn't bleed; even more fortuitously, the recoil from the blow was so powerful it knocked Cable out and off her feet. With admirable heroism, he trapped a howl deep in his chest and Flashed her back to STAR Labs, dumping her in the Cortex and disappearing in another burst of yellow lightning without pausing for breath.

He yanked the comms, Flashed back into untraceable civilian gear, and disappeared into the CCPD basement to break his knuckles on the speedster-proof bag nobody knew about.

But even now, his knuckles won't break. The Speed-enhanced bone and sinew hold up, no matter how hard he hits the bag. His arms tremble, sore and hot with pain, but he doesn't stop.

_You gotta mean it. You gotta commit to hurting them, or they will break you in half before you can take a breath._

He thinks about Zoom and the way his back arched like a fucking  _tree_ snapping in half. One moment there was sensation, and then he was a ragdoll collapsing to the pavement, his legs just  _gone_. He'd been too out of it to appreciate the damage, to respect the magnitude of the blow.

Aching to replicate it now, he slams his fists into the bag, over and over, waiting to hear the crack, to feel that earth-shattering arm slash across his spine. It's stuck on a loop, the way Zoom cut him down. Heat flares up in his lower back, and he knows he needs to sit back, to  _cool it_ , but the thought only makes a terrible laugh bubble up in his chest.

_You can't keep anybody alive, can you? Turned Snart into a fucking hero and he died._

He slams his fists into the bag over and over and over, trying to make it understand his damage, to make it tear and bend and break in ways it isn't supposed to, because if  _he_  has to endure then so does  _it_.

_It's inanimate. It will never suffer. That's your job._

He crushes the rational voice, crushes the anguish into the smallest space he possibly can. There was a time he would have vocalized nearly any hurt. Nowadays, he knows that he can crush his responses in his chest, confining them to a broken pile of glass until the world is duly saved and he can find a place so far away no one hears him finally scream.

He doesn't make noise in front of them anymore because he  _cares_ about their feelings. He knows it hurts them, and he cares, about his family, about his friends, about strangers on the streets. He is going to literally care to death and it finally, finally splits a seam in the indestructible bag as he punches it so hard it rattles on its chain, cracking with thunder.

 _You're not going to win. All you're going to do is keep breaking and pretending that you're a hero for suffering_.

There is no rest, he thinks, shaking, sweating and straining for breath as his fists finally slow down –  _speed up_ – collapsing on his knees in front of the bag.

Hanging his head, he reaches out and hugs the bag, entire body sore. There are a hundred aches he does not voice, wounds without visible scars,  _phantom pains_ , 'phantom,' like they aren't real,  _if it's in the mind how can it be real pain?_  His forehead presses against the bag; his breath comes quickly, raggedly, and he could not rise if the roof overhead collapsed. He's not sure how it hasn't, yet. It only makes his chest tight.

_Look at you. What are you even doing?_

Trying, he thinks, arms sinking, bruised knuckles settling on the stone floor. Tears trickle hotly down the right side of his face; they burn unshed in his left eye.

He's trying to save his friends, but Cisco died, Eddie died, Ronnie died, Caitlin died, Oliver died,  _they all died_ in Vandal's attack, hell, Dr. Wells died to him the day he found out he  _killed_ Barry's mother. He's trying to save his family, but Joe died, Wally died, Dad died, Mom died,  _again and again and again._ He's even trying to save other metas, but Danton died, Bette died, Tony died, Farooq died, Hannibal died.

But he isn't blameless.

_You've killed._

Al Rothstein. Ed Slick.

He clenches his fingers, recalling the indifference, the shock of indifference that it was  _over_ , that easily. He ended two lives without batting an eyelash. When push came to shove, he let his own doppelganger die.

And in due course, he became a monster capable of killing Iris, the  _love_ of his  _life_ , over and over and over and over,  _ad infinitum_ —

_You didn't need to kill DeVoe to show them you were a monster. You're already a monster._

Gasping for breath, he doesn't move, eyes shut but still leaking tears. He just – he just wants to  _help_ , dammit, and he can't even do that. From day fucking  _one_ he couldn't do it, because he let that man die, he didn't rescue him, he could've Flashed into the fog and stopped him from crashing, somehow,  _he could have, somehow,_  he had this  _power_ and he couldn't  _protect_ people, what kind of  _hero_ was he?

And even when he helped, even when he did his  _job_ , there were casualties, metas locked up carelessly, gleefully, for days-weeks-months on end, like he'd never even heard of due process, of  _justice_. Even when he wasn't wearing the blood-red suit, when he was Barry fucking Allen, there were still casualties. He ran his sterile little scans, bagged up evidence like it didn't belong to a human being, it was a  _cadaver_ now, what a clean word,  _cadaver_  – he put the puzzle pieces and typed up the reports, and he helped put dozens of people in cold little cages for the rest of their lives.

Had he eaten before Flashing down here, he knows he would throw up. As it stands, he shifts so he can wrap his arms around his knees, hugging them to his chest and groaning softly.

He misses his stupid little cage, misses getting up, getting food, getting time out in the cold sunlight and getting to play cards with the other inmates, before getting to go the fuck to sleep because he wasn't a citywide vigilante, no, he was just  _Barry Allen_. He misses the guards and the chores, the stuff he hated ( _the strip searches, the showers, the hole_ ), the stuff he never thought he'd think twice about ( _Sesame Street, gym time, flipping through old books for the sheer sensory change_ ). He even misses carving out another notch on the wall, recording his days, his ability to  _survive_.

He misses everything that wasn't  _this_ , this trapped-rat-straining-for-breath-far-below-anyone-who-could-hear-him.

 _You didn't even make it a month_.

He tries to pull himself away from prison, to recall that he's  _free_ , he's  _free_. He wasn't almost sold off in a metahuman trafficking scheme. He was  _fine_. If he starts anguishing over the  _almosts,_ he'll never make it to tomorrow. His ledger is already too long, his  _real_ suffering a mile long. He doesn't get to grieve over  _almost_. He doesn't get to feel anything but neutrally pleased it didn't happen, everything associated with it wasn't  _real_.

_The fear was. The fury was._

_The fear is. The fury **is**_.

Growling, low and animalistic, The Flash resurfaces and shoves himself to his feet. Barry looks around the small, dark, blue-lit room, at the punching bag beaten to within an inch of  _its_ life, and lets apathy seep into him. It doesn't matter that the abrasion slicing him from brow to hip still hurts like  _hell_ ; it'll heal. He can't see out of his left eye, but he doesn't need to.

It'll heal.

Disappearing into the void, back up the stairwell, back to the land of the living, he passes no one and vanishes into the streets. It's dark, and late, and the open air is suffocating, huge in scope and overwhelming in complexity. He feels the panic rising again, more trapped than ever,  _no matter where you go you can never get away from this_. He halts, so suddenly he nearly trips, retreating from the main street until his back hits an alley wall, aching to sink into it.

He can't – he can't do this, he can't  _do_   _this_  –

He doesn't remember fumbling his phone out of his pocket or sending off the text, but he shakily replaces it in his pocket before a response can come in. He sinks to the pavement, the dirty, grimy street that people piss in, and tucks his arms over his head like he can protect himself that way, too small to see in the midnight-blue.

There is something kinetic between them, something extraordinary between them, because he doesn't tell her where he is, but she finds him. He doesn't move, can't bear to move, and she crouches next to him, asking urgently what's wrong,  _are you okay?_ , and he just shakes his head. He doesn't make a sound, can't make a sound, not around her,  _don't hurt them,_ but when she wraps her arms around him he can't suppress the silent sob that hiccups in his chest.

Reaching up to hold her elbow, he doesn't say anything, breathing shakily, aching for reprieve that isn't coming because  _it's never gonna stop_.

Fisting a hand in his hair, he falls apart, right there in the alley, right where anyone could see him, but he's not The Flash, not without the suit,  _just his scars_. Savitar was scarred, too, and he feels something awful form in his stomach at the thought that he might ever remind her of him.

 _How could you not? You_ are  _Savitar_.

It burns in his blood, the thought that he will become a monster if he shows his scars, that if he ever gets hurt and doesn't heal again he won't ever be truly  _Barry_ again. It hurts. It hurts a  _lot_ , and he tries to stay hidden, to crush the emotion  _down_ , but he can't, releasing his grip and daring to lift his head a little. She releases him so he can unfold, and he slowly obliges, slowly turning his head to look at her.

He wants to say something, something – reassuring, normal,  _I'm not a monster, I'm still Barry, it'll heal_ – but when he looks at her, he doesn't see the fear, the horror, the  _repulsion_  he anticipates.

There's only softness in her eyes, affection and worry, and he feels something strangling him release him.

She cups the right side of his face, conscious of the tenderness on the left side where the lash arches across it, and leans forward, resting her forehead against his. He closes his eyes, so relieved it hurts.

"I'm sorry you're hurting," she murmurs, on behalf of everything, it seems. He doesn't open his eyes, breathing shallowly, scarcely daring to believe she's even  _real_ anymore. How can someone as good as Iris still  _exist?_

 _In spite of you. In spite of Savitar_.

He grimaces and pulls back. Heart in his throat, he looks at her, only half of his vision online. "Iris," he breathes, and can't find any other words, because  _Iris_ is all there is.

She encourages him to stand, and he does, feeling heavier and clumsier than usual. She steadies him with a hand on his waist. "Let's go home," she suggests, tucking under his arm, settling an arm around his waist.

He could run them, but he is alone when he runs, as alone as any human being can be in a universe unto themselves. So he nods, and turns his head to press a kiss to her temple first, lingering.

Home is a long walk home, but it's less cold with her at his side. It's more jarring with every step than it would be if he simply Flashed, but he almost welcomes the pain, the acknowledgment that he is sore and tired.

_You're not invincible. Or inexhaustible._

Their new apartment is smaller and warmer for it. Barry loves it for how different it is from their old loft.

He sees himself in the bathroom mirror and halts, arrested by the sight. His left eye is bloodshot and red, but the angry black mark is serrated and huge, like an animal sliced him open from eye to hip. The scar disappears under the shirt, plain, pedestrian, unassuming, but he can feel the mark.

Iris gets her shoes off before turning to face him. He looks down reflexively, but she simply steps forward, taking his hand and squeezing it gently. "Hey. Look at me." He looks up, meeting her gaze, even though fully a fifth of his field of view is gone.

_You don't need it._

"It's gonna be okay," she promises.

He nods once, a tear slipping down his right cheek. She reaches up and brushes it away. "Even though it's not okay now," she adds softly, and he has to swallow and look away, or he won't be able to contain the sheer anguish raging in his chest, an animal uncaged, an animal dying to be freed.

_You don't deserve to be saved._

Looking right at her, visibly scarred but still full of affection for her, and his life, and everything in spite of it all – he dares to defy the terrible little voice in his head.

_Yes, I do._

She slides her arms around his waist, and they hold each other there for a long time, his chin on her head, and it is not enough, and still everything he needs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm tempted to turn this fic into a 'verse, where Barry's scarring is permanent, but we'll see! I still have to finish up HOK first, but I go where my muse tells me. I hope you enjoyed it!


	2. We Carry On

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In a truly shocking twist of events (she said, ironically), I've turned this one-shot into a multichapter! Because what else do I need, other than more WIPs? :D This chapter features a hearty helping of KillerFlashVibe and some unaddressed grief, because Cisco Deserves To Grieve, Dammit.
> 
> Enjoy!
> 
> Oh, and I almost forgot -- changed the fic title! This is a truly rare event, but this was actually the original title of the fic, and I'm quite fond of it. I've switched the titles around, so "Branded" is the name of the first chapter, while "We Carry On" is the name of this piece.

"You've had better days."

Barry smiles tightly. It pulls on the scar. "Flattery won't get you far," he says, unzipping his work coat and hanging it up on the rack.

"Oh, I've heard it'll get you  _everywhere_ ," Axel says sweetly, sitting on the back of Barry's couch, dangling Barry's house keys in his hand. It infuriates Barry on some subconscious level that he'll have to change the locks –  _again_ – but he's too tired to care. "What happened, Speedy? Somebody take a knife to that pretty face?"

"What do you want, Axel?" Barry steps into the kitchen, deliberately putting his back to Axel. He fishes a bottle of Gatorade from the fridge and downs it in one go.

"What I've always wanted, Flash." The keys smack into the back of his shoulders. Barry flinches reflexively, leaving them on the floor as he tosses the empty bottle in the recycling bin. "To be Central City's finest! You're stealing my thunder." With a jackal cackle, he pushes himself off the couch and prowls over. "You get to be front-page news fifty-two weeks a year. Why don't you spare some change for the petty criminal?" He jabs Barry's side hard. "Come on, Flashy,  _fight me_."

Barry turns to face him, catching his hand as it goes in for a second jab. "You're supposed to be in prison," he says, shoving him back fiercely.

"So are you," Axel reminds him. "You're not going to make a good front page cover with that scar," he muses, drawing a hand meaningfully across his own face. "Symmetry is the essence of beauty, Flash. Us crooked creatures don't make for good role models. We scare the kids," he adds, covering his mouth with a hand conspiratorially. "It's nice to know even the gods can be branded."

Barry Flashes forward, shoving him against the counter hard enough to make it rattle and Axel grimaces, but it isn't satisfying. Barry shakes with exhaustion; these forty-eight-hour shifts are murder. Letting Axel go, he steps back, prowling off into the living room instead. Axel doesn't follow, musing lightly, "That all you got?"

In response, Barry takes a seat on the chair near the window, almost close enough to taste the rain. "Get out," he says simply. "Don't come back."

Axel turns slowly in place, resting his elbows on the counter and regarding Barry with great amusement. "Is the Flash  _tired?_ "

Barry lifts his eyebrows, rests his civilian boots on the footrest in front of him, and says nothing. He'd kick Axel out himself, but Axel isn't a meta, and Iris is with Linda in Coast City having a girl's weekend out; there's no danger. And he  _is_ tired. "Get out," he repeats calmly, not breaking the stare. In the growing darkness, there is something predatorial about it, like he just needs the chase instinct to kick in.

"Make me," Axel says, not moving.

Barry narrows his eyes. "I can snap your neck in less time than it takes you to blink," he reminds him.

"But you won't," Axel replies, caustic in his dismissal. "Stop  _posturing_."

It happens in less than a second: Axel is up against the wall, Barry's hand locked around his throat, the entire world frozen around them. The other man's feet don't even touch the ground, the helplessness of his position perfect, his neck so fucking  _breakable_ in Barry's hand.

 _Commit. If you're going to hurt someone,_ commit.

In less than a second, it's over: the world surges back into real time and before Barry can make himself let go, Axel reaches up and pinches a tiny capsule against his right wrist.

Pain knifes into his hand, a burning, blackout sensation tearing down his arm. He lets go of Axel, staggering back, shaking his hand frantically, trying to put out a fire that isn't there.

Righting himself, Axel cackles again, admiring his own gruesome handiwork. "You are  _so_ predictable." Barry turns his spasming right hand over and sees the black tar on it. "Isn't it nifty? It's what they use to make the  _bad metas_ stop biting at their handlers. It'll keep burning through your skin until it reaches bone." With a sweet smile, he adds, "Last time I tried it out, the meta's skull was still fizzling when I made my graceful exit."

Barry Flashes, shoving his hand under the sink and a deluge of running water. Axel laughs and says, "It's hydrophobic. Just let nature run its course, Flashy."

Instead, Barry  _runs_ , driving his burning fist into Axel's stomach before crashing through the door. He doesn't phase; he just splinters through the wood with an impact like a cannonball. He doesn't stop running until he's skating to a halt in the Cortex. There's no pain in his hand, but he doesn't take any comfort in it. "Guys-we've-got-a-problem," he gasps, breathless and agitated, a burst pipe hissing in his ears.

Thirty-eight seconds later, he exhales deeply, hand encased in blue ice. "Thank you," he tells Caitlin raggedly. Killer Frost arches an eyebrow at him but doesn't respond.

"Dude – what happened?" Cisco asks.

He sighs and sinks into a chair, cradling his hand to his chest. "Trickster. Axel," he clarifies, closing his eyes and breathing shallowly. The cold is excruciating – it's the worst kept secret that he hates Killer Frost's powers – but he doesn't voice a complaint. "He said …" He has to pause a moment, grimacing as he moves his hand, blood aching to attend to the frozen limb. There's a sheen of blue ice curled around his wrist, cutting off all circulation. " _Hm,_ he said – it's used – by  _handlers._ " Flexing his fingers involuntarily, an animal twisting against restraint, he adds tightly, "We gotta get it off."

"Take a hammer to it," Killer Frost suggests without heat. "You don't need both hands."

He bares his teeth at the floor, grateful for an instant that his injury gives him an excuse to snarl.

_They'll put you down if you ever become useless to them. If you ever give them a reason to doubt that they have total control over you. If you don't wear their suit with its killing power, return to the only place on Earth with cells strong enough to hold you—_

"No," Cisco interrupts shortly, putting a steadying hand on his shoulder. "We're not cutting off anybody's hands."

( _Does he know, does he know yet?_ )

Looking up, Barry meets Killer Frost's eyes and feels a rage so potent it is almost suffocating. ( _She hurt him. She hurt him, she hurt him, she hurt him—_ )

 _So did you_.

He escapes Cisco's hold without a word, standing, putting distance between them. He doesn't know if he'll ever be able to move past Dante's death, if he'll ever be able to dissociate the wave of guilt and self-loathing from it because  _every day you get away from that moment is a day more that you'll have to erase if you ever wanna be a hero, don't you wanna be a hero?_

 _Commit_.

He stares at the wall, back to both, and only feels uneasy. "I'll go back in time," he says in a low voice, more to himself than anyone.

The room cools several degrees. "Whoa," Cisco says, and his voice is deeper, darker. "Halt."

"What's the  _point_ of having superpowers if you can never use them?" Barry demands, refusing to look at him. "It's ten fucking minutes. Nobody's gonna die."

"What if he goes after somebody else, this time?" Cisco demands.

"He doesn't care," Killer Frost submits dryly. "Look at him. He won't even look at you."

"Barry," Cisco says, advancing, and he doesn't turn around. "If you do this—"

"You won't remember."  _He can Vibe._  "Nothing bad's gonna happen," he redirects. Flexing his left hand, he adds, "If we unfreeze it and the stuff doesn't come off, I'm losing a hand." He turns to face them, finally, and knows he must look wild around the edges. "I'm tired of risking life and  _limb_ for this," he adds, and hates that his voice cracks a little.

_Look at you. You can't even be angry properly._

Cisco levels him with a flat look and holds up both hands. "Barry. Don't run," he warns.

If he pointed a loaded gun at Barry, it couldn't be more threatening. Barry's head throbs; heat surges through his veins. The pain is creeping back into his right hand; they have to freeze it again,  _make it hurt,_ unless he – unless he does what he  _can_ do,  _fix it, fix it, fix it._

He aches, suddenly, for a fight, for an opportunity to finally get this fucking thing off his  _chest_ , and maybe it's that ugly thought that makes him take a single slow step forward, a deliberate provocation, and he expects the impulse, expects to be shunted back hard, to feel  _something_.

Cisco lowers his hands. Killer Frost sets a hip against the main console, bored.

_You can't fight them. Not both of them._

She's not on Cisco's side, Killer Frost doesn't owe allegiance to  _anyone_ , he's fast, he could overpower them, but they aren't afraid,  _why aren't they afraid of you?_

_Do you want them to be?_

It's like a slap in the face. He steps back, gaze drifting down to his left hand. His  _vibrating_  hand. He lifts it, and Cisco yelps, "Barry!" But Barry doesn't slice the mangled appendage off. With sudden focus, he scrapes the ice from his hand, the ice and all that toxic black tar, and it is blackout pain as nerves alight but he doesn't make a sound until, abruptly, it's just raw angry red flesh underneath his nails, and then he halts, and a drop of red drips onto the floor.

His throat feels tight, but it isn't pain that holds his tongue.

_How many times can you fall apart before they stop picking up the wreckage?_

"I'm sorry," he says aloud.

Cisco exhales. Killer Frost says nothing.

Another drop of red joins the black-and-blue ice on the floor. He stares down at it. As a third drop hits the floor, he wonders if this is what Eddie would have seen, had he looked down before he fell, mortally wounded. Frozen, he watches the blood drip – drip – drip – from his hand, until suddenly there is another hand in view, and Cisco wordlessly wraps clean white cloth around it. Barry doesn't look up until Cisco puts a hand on his shoulder, squeezing firmly.

"What's going on?" he asks at last, voice low but not dangerous.

Short-circuited, Barry doesn't even feel the anger, the fatigue or anguish or anything in between. He just says slowly, "Axel said they use that stuff on other metas. To keep them … cooperative. For their  _handlers._ " The hand on his shoulder tightens a little before letting go.

"Makes sense," Killer Frost chimes in, and Barry looks over at her but feels nothing. Not the anger, not the grief, not even the terrible hope that maybe somehow, someday they would fix this broken thing between them.

_You killed Dante. And in this world, you might as well have killed Caitlin, too._

"Amunet isn't stupid, and shock collars are  _so_ overdone," Killer Frost adds, oblivious to his thoughts.

"Cait," Cisco warns in an undertone, letting Barry go and turning to face her.

Killer Frost rolls her eyes. "She's not here," she reminds coolly. "Don't leave a message."

"Caitlin," Cisco says, and there is a darkness there that says he  _knows_ , he knows exactly what happens in – two years? Three? Five?

_You've broken this family._

"Stop calling me that," Killer Frost says shortly. "Chanting  _her_ name three times and clicking your heels isn't going to change a thing."

_They were okay before you. They would've been fine without you._

_Why did you break this family?_

"Caitlin," Cisco says again, stubbornly.

She laughs. Pushing herself off the console, she says without heat, "It's  _Frost_ , Reverb. I'm gonna go get a drink." She eyes up Barry, musing, "You looked better in blue." Then she's gone, sauntering out of the room like nothing has changed, and maybe nothing has, and Barry hates how it crushes his shoulders.

"I could really punch something right about now," Cisco says softly.

Barry doesn't think: "I know a place."

* * *

The speedster proof bag doesn't twitch under Cisco's fists, but he doesn't seem to need it to. Hair tied back, shirt damp with exertion, he asks calmly, "You do this often?"

Sitting on the floor, legs outstretched and back to the wall, Barry picks at the bloody wrappings on his hand. "Loaded question."

Cisco huffs, throwing another punch. The gloves are thick enough that he doesn't do any damage to his hands. Hands are everything to a Viber, as essential to Cisco as Barry's feet are to his Flashy alter-ego's lifestyle. And just like Barry needs to run, sometimes Cisco just needs to punch something. "Why didn't you tell me about this place?" Cisco asks instead.

"Didn't seem necessary."

"Right." Cisco throws another, harder punch, grunting with the effort. "Do you ever just feel like you're gonna snap?" he asks suddenly. Barry blinks, looking up at him. Cisco sweeps the hair off his forehead and looks at Barry, repeating seriously, "Do you?"

Barry weighs the damage truth might cause. Then he says  _fuck it_ and admits: "Every day."

Cisco blows out a breath. It almost feels like relief. "Yeah." Throwing another punch, he says between hits, "We gotta – get outta – this town."

Barry tips his head against the wall, closing his eyes. "I wanna run away sometimes, but there's … this fucking  _leash_ on me." He reaches up with his bandaged hand to clutch his own shirt. "I can't get away from this place without thinking about what I'm leaving behind. All the bodies piling up in my absence."

"Hate to disappoint you, buddy," Cisco says, exhaling sharply as he stops punching the bag, "but people're gonna die, with or without us around."

Barry lifts both hands to fist his hair. "You don't think I know that?" He hates the bitterness in his own voice.

"Sometimes we –" Cisco throws a punch hard enough the bag actually shakes; Barry can feel the slight sonic  _boom_ , aware of the sheer power in those hands. "Sometimes we just gotta say it out loud, or it'll kill us. We can't save everybody." Another punch. "Some people are gonna die." Bang, bang, bang— "No matter what we do."

Barry puts both hands on the bag, halting it. He doesn't know when he stood up. It doesn't matter. "I wish—"

"Don't." Cisco inhales deeply, exhaling just as slowly, and repeats shortly, "Don't. I just stopped—" He doesn't finish the thought, jaw clicking when he shuts it.

Bile rises in Barry's throat. ( _I just stopped hating you_.) "Cisco—"

Cisco throws a punch, and it shakes Barry, too. "Just let it – fucking – heal – over," he says with a vehemence that digs into Barry's soul. He holds onto the bag, and each blow reverberates through his hands, his arms, his shoulders, his teeth. "I don't – wanna – talk – about – it."

"Cisco."

"You didn't have – a brother," he says forcefully, and the next blow shunts him back hard enough that he releases the bag, staggered. Cisco looks around it, looking right at him, and says seriously, "So don't try to understand."

There's something familiar about the phrase, something bitter. It sticks in his chest. He cannot speak.

"I don't have a brother anymore," Cisco says, and there's a bright sheen in his eyes that takes a sledgehammer to Barry's heart and fucking shatters it. "I don't blame you," Cisco adds tiredly, waving a gloved hand dismissively. "I know you didn't drive the car. We all existed before you came here. I don't blame this universe on  _you_.

"But I see those other universes," he goes on, voice tight but steady, stripping off the gloves and throwing them on the floor, "the ones where he's still alive, the ones where we're  _happy_. I dream about them." Leaning a hand on the bag, he admits, "Every night. Every damn night, I see those other worlds, and some are better, and some are worse, and all of them make me wish I'd never helped build that particle accelerator in the goddamned first place."

Barry steps closer, slowly, baby-steps. "Cisco."

"I wish I could say that I didn't know what would happen if you ran back," he continues, rushing towards the falls and not caring that the current is picking up around him. "I  _wish_ I lived in that blissful ignorance where I believed that maybe things would be  _okay_. But I know what would happen." He shudders, arching his head a little to one side, like there's a pain there he can't escape. "You'd die. Caitlin would die. Iris would die. Iris – she dies a lot, you know?"

His voice cracks. Barry kind of wants to die when he hears it, but he just steps closer, instead. Arm's reach, now. "All those time remnants you made, trying to save her. Sixty-fucking-times, Barry. And she – she was – she  _is_ the love of your life, of course you weren't gonna stop trying, but seeing that, I couldn't – how could I ask you to die again for my brother, when I knew something –  _someone_ – would take his place anyway, that this universe is a fucking  _joke_ because no matter how much power we have, we're powerless to save the people we really care about?"

His shoulders hitch, then, and Barry encloses him, carefully, deliberately, in a hug. The hitching breaths continue, and Cisco's hands rise slowly to hold onto the back of his shirt, then clutch it, and finally he sobs out loud, "And then – then we lost C-Caitlin, and I couldn't fucking  _do it_ anymore, Barry, I couldn't – she never wanted this, and every day I think, goddammit,  _she didn't want this_ —"

Barry crushes him against his chest. Still Cisco sobs, his emotions too big for either of them to hold. "I want to hate you," Cisco admits ferociously, a growl in his voice like thunder, but his grip only tightens on Barry's shirt. "I just –" He draws in a shuddering breath, and Barry flattens his good hand against the back of Cisco's shoulders. "I just – I need my friend." Hugging him tightly, no space between them, Cisco repeats softly, "I just need my friend."

In the dark blue light of that small basement room, Barry holds onto him, eyes sliding shut as Cisco sobs against him.

He doesn't need to say it for it to be heard in the nonexistent space between them:

_I'm here._

And somehow, in spite of – literally everything, all of the tragedies, all of the pain, they're still  _alive_.

Soon, they'll venture out into the world again. They'll find out that the neighbors will already have called the cops to pick up an unconscious Axel, the broken-in door of Barry and Iris' apartment more than enough evidence to signal his irreputable intentions. They'll make their way back to STAR Labs and analyze the black ice on the floor, preparing a way to counteract it the next time it comes into play – because it's always  _next time_ , there is no  _never again_. They'll meet up with Caitlin at Jitters and crash at Cisco's place because it's so much nicer to be lonely together.

They'll have to face the world again, someday, but holding onto Cisco, his hand still burning, his face still scarred, Barry dares to cling to that tiniest patch of light and think that maybe, just maybe, everything will be okay.

_Someday._

When Iris returns a day later, he holds her for almost forty-five minutes, in silence, desperate never to let any of this slip through his fingers again.


End file.
